In this video, I’m gonna show you how to automatically install WordPress plugins.
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Now, the first thing you need to do is go to your plugins icon or your plugins tab that you see here, and expand that tab, and click on Installed Plugins. Now, on the main plugins page, you’ll be able to see all the available plugins, and you can also see the recently active WordPress plugins, and also some of the inactive plugins that you probably haven’t used in a while. So if you wanna add a new WordPress plugin automatically, just go to your plugins tab again and click on Add New.
So right on top here, there are a few ways for you to find the WordPress plugins that you wanna use. If you have already downloaded a WordPress plugin in a zipped format, then you can just click on Upload to upload that particular file. You can also search by featured WordPress Plugins, the most popular WordPress plugins, the newest WordPress plugins, and WordPress plugins that have been recently updated. So now, I’m gonna show you an example, and I’m going to select a plugin from a list of the most popular plugins. But if you know the exact name of the plugin, you can also type in the name of the plugin here and click on Search Plugins, and you can either choose Term, Author, or Tag. And if you browse to the bottom here, you’ll be able to see all the most popular tags used for all those WordPress plugins out there. So you can easily find a WordPress plugin that you wanna use based on the function of the WordPress plugin.
For example, if you wanna find a plugin that helps you to either manage or display your comments, then you can click on the Comments tag here, and you will be able to see all the available plugins. But for now, I’m gonna click on Popular. So I’m gonna browse through this list and I’m gonna install a plugin called Contact Form 7. And just click on Install.
And in the window that opens up, you’ll be able to get full information on this particular plugin. On the main page here, you’ll find a description of the plugin, and you can just scroll down here. All right, and you can see some of the installation processes, screenshots if they are available. Some plugin authors will upload screenshots, whereas others don’t, and you can also see the Change Logs, which means that a list of the new versions of this plugin and also the FAQ.
So, once you’re satisfied, just click on Install Now. But before that, of course, you can check if this plugin is compatible to the WordPress blog that you are using. And this is very important, because if you install plugins that are not yet up to speed with the particular WordPress version that you are currently using, then you may experience some technical difficulties or some errors on your WordPress blog, so make sure that it’s compatible up to the WordPress version that you’re using, and you can also see the direct link to this plugins page on WordPress.org, and also the homepage of the plugin owner or plugin creator.
And you’ll be able to see some of the ratings, okay? So this plugin basically has four out of five stars, and I can see that there has been about 277 ratings for this plugin. So it means that it’s a pretty popular plugin, and four out of five stars is not that bad, so it probably means that this plugin is worth installing.
And then, I’m gonna click on Install Now. Okay, so on this screen, I would need to enter my web hosting username and password, or my C Panel username and password, and this is not the username and password that you use to log in to your WordPress blog.
And in the Host Name section, make sure that you put the correct FTP protocols to access your website. And in most cases, it will be ftp. your actual URL.com, and this, of course, would change, depending on the URL of your website. But in most cases, this is the FTP address. And of course, if this does not work for you, then you probably need to check with your web hosting company on the actual FTP address for your blog, and the FTP address is important – it enables you to upload and download files to your web hosting account.
And then enter your username and password, and then click on “Proceed.†Okay, so my plugin has been installed, and you can see the process involved here: First, it downloads the install package from the actual URL, then it unpacks the package, and then it installs the plugin. So basically, it does everything you would do with a manual process of uploading plugins to your WordPress blog. It’s just that it’s much easier to do it this way. And then you can either activate this plugin or return to the Plugin Installer page. So I’m gonna activate this plugin.
Okay, so here, you can see the list of all the plugins that I have on my WordPress blog, and I can click on Active to see the active plugins, and this is the plugin that I have just installed. So if I want to deactivate this plugin, I can just click on Deactivate. All right, and you will see that this plugin is no longer on my list of active plugins. Instead, it has moved to a list of inactive plugins on my WordPress blog. So that’s how you automatically install WordPress plugins.